The present invention relates to a fluorescent tube ignitor that drives a plurality of fluorescent tubes to light up simultaneously in a variety of electronic equipment including facsimiles, color scanners, optical character readers (OCR), and others.
Conventionally, existing fluorescent tube ignitors provide each fluorescent tube with an independent driving circuit. A plurality of fluorescent tubes constitute a complete unit. Such a conventional configuration obliges each fluorescent tube ignitor unit to contain a plurality of driving circuits, the number of circuits corresponds to the number of fluorescent tubes provided in the unit. As a result, these circuits have actually occupied a substantial area in each complete unit, and thus, they make it difficult to realize small sized modern electronic equipment using fluorescent tubes.